Why isn’t capitalism working?

Americans have traditionally been the most enthusiastic champions of capitalism. Yet a recent American public opinion survey found that just 50 per cent of people had a positive opinion of capitalism while 40 per cent did not. The disillusionment was particularly marked among young people 18-29, African Americans and Hispanics, those with incomes under $30,000 and self-described Democrats.

Three elections in a row in the U.S. have been bloodbaths by recent standards for incumbents, with the left side doing well in 2006 and 2008 and the right winning comprehensively in 2010. With the rise of the Tea Party on the right, and the Occupy movement on the left, this suggests far more is up for grabs than usual in this election year.

So how justified is disillusionment with market capitalism? This depends on the answer to two critical questions. Do today’s problems inhere in today’s form of market capitalism or are they subject to more direct solution? Are there imaginable better alternatives?

The spread of stagnation and abnormal unemployment from Japan to the rest of the industrialized world does raise doubts about capitalism’s efficacy as a promoter of employment and rising living standards for a broad middle class. This problem is genuine. Few would confidently bet that the U.S. or Europe will see a return to full employment as previously defined within the next 5 years. The economies of both are likely to be constrained by demand for a long time.

But does this reflect an inherent flaw in capitalism or, as Keynes suggested, a “magneto” problem (like the failure of a car alternator) that can be addressed with proper fiscal and monetary policies, and which will not benefit from large scale structural measures? I believe the evidence overwhelmingly supports the latter. Efforts to reform capitalism are more likely to divert from the steps needed to promote demand than to contribute to putting people back to work. I suspect that if and when macroeconomic policies are appropriately adjusted, much of the contemporary concern will fade away.

That said, sharp increases in unemployment beyond the business cycle—one in six American men between 25 and 54 are likely to be out of work even after the U.S. economy recovers—along with dramatic rises in the share of income going to the top 1 and even the top .01 per cent of the population and declining social mobility do raise serious questions about the fairness of capitalism. The problem is real and profound and seems very unlikely to correct itself untended. Unlike cyclical concerns there is no obvious solution at hand. Indeed the observation that even Chinese manufacturing employment appears well below the level of 15 years ago suggests that the problem’s roots lie deep with the evolution of technology.

The agricultural economy gave way to the industrial economy because progress enabled demands for food to be met by only a small fraction of the population, freeing large numbers of people to work outside agriculture. The same process is underway today with respect to manufacturing and a substantial range of services reducing employment prospects for most citizens. At the same time, just as in the early days of the industrial era, the combination of substantial dislocations and greater ability to produce at scale is enabling a lucky few to acquire great fortunes.

The nature of the transformation is highlighted by the 50-fold change in the relative price of a television set of a constant quality and a day in a hospital over the last generation. While it is often observed that wages for median workers have stagnated, this obscures an important aspect of what is occurring. Measured via items such as appliances or clothing or telephone service where productivity growth has been rapid, wages have actually risen rapidly over the last generation. The problem is that they have stagnated or fallen measured relative to the price of housing, health care, food and energy or education. As fewer and fewer people are needed to meet the population’s demand for goods like appliances and clothing, it is natural that more and more people work in producing goods like health care and education where outcomes are manifestly unsatisfactory. Indeed as the economist Michael Spence has documented, a process of this kind is underway; essentially all employment growth in the U.S. over the last generation has come in non-traded goods.

The difficulty is that in many of these areas the traditional case for market capitalism is weaker. It is surely not an accident that in almost every society the production of health care and education is much more involved with the public sector than the production of manufactured goods. There is an imperative to move workers from activities like producing steel to activities like taking care of the aged. At the same time there is the imperative of shrinking or least slowing the growth of the public sector.

This brings us to the charge that the governments of industrial market capitalist societies are bankrupt. Even as market outcomes seem increasingly unsatisfactory, budget pressures have constrained the ability of the public sector to respond. How and when–and not whether–basic programs of social protection will be cut back, is now back on the table. The basic solvency of too many capitalist states seems in question.

Again the problems are very real. While I believe more than most that the U.S. government will be able to borrow on very attractive terms for a long time, if as I fear private borrowing remains depressed, there is no denying that the current path of planned spending and planned revenue collection are inconsistent. And Europe is teaching us that markets can take significant fiscal problems and make them catastrophic by becoming too alarmed too rapidly.

At one level the answer here is simply to insist on more political will and courage. But at a deeper level, citizens of the industrial world who believe that they live in progressive societies are right to wonder why increasingly affluent societies need to roll back levels of social protection. Paradoxically, the answer lies in the very success of capitalism which has made the opportunity-cost of an individual teaching or nursing or administering that much more expensive.

When outcomes are unsatisfactory, as they surely are at present, there is always a debate between those who believe that the current course needs to be pursued with increased vigor and those who argue for a radical change in direction. That debate is somewhat beside the point in the case of market capitalism. Where it has been applied it has been an enormous success. The challenge for the next generation is that while that success will increasingly be taken for granted and indeed will become an increasing source of frustration in these pinched times, its success cannot be matched outside the market’s natural domain. It is not so much the most capitalist parts of the contemporary economy but the least—those concerned with health, education and social protection–that are in most need of reinvention.

Quite easy Larry . . systemic corruption – if the young and disadvantaged don’t buy into the hope that they can work for a better life and actually achieve it because the playing field is somewhat level, capitalism works. Unfortunately the recent “edition” of capitalism – that you helped construct by the way – does not offer this hope. When the institutions that we know are taking a piece of us every day actually get bailed out at our expense? when politicians can legally front run their own legislation? I could go on – surprised someone as “brilliant” as you prefers to plead ignorance via articles such as this. Cowardly really.

It is laughable that Larry Summers is lecturing on capitalism – for he is one of the main villains in the current financial mess. Along with the past several presidents (present one included)and members of congress, having the crooks at GS, et al running the government, for the benefit of a few (Summers included)and then feigning wonder in why real Americans despise the government, financial institutions and capitalism, is just a continuation of the award winning show that these people have been acting out for the past thirty years. The audience is no longer buying tickets to the show. Everyone now wants to see a new play, with different actors – starting with Summers.

The problem with capitalism is that it has transitioned from being our servant to being our master. Workers have become slaves to the dog-eat-dog economy it has spawned in which far too many workers are competing for too little work.

This has happened because economists have failed to recognize the inverse relationship between population density and per capita consumption. Per capita consumption data from around the world and for a wide range of products proves that per capita consumption declines as societies grow more crowded beyond some critical population density. Since per capita consumption and per capita employment are inextricably linked, the result is worsening unemployment and poverty.

And it is disparities in per capita consumption that drive global trade imbalances. When two nations grossly disparate in population density attempt to trade freely with each other, the work of manufacturing is spread evenly across the combined labor force. But the disparity in consumption remains. The result is an automatic shift of manufacturing jobs to the more densely populated nation, and an automatic trade deficit and rising unemployment for the other. Population density is an extremely consistent predictor of the balance of trade.

In spite of this, and because of economists’ steadfast refusal to ever again give credence to the notion that there may be a problem with never-ending population growth, we continue with our attempts to use population growth to stoke economic growth, making matters worse. Nothing will improve until the field of economics pulls its collective head from the sand and looks beyond the narrow confines of Malthus’ theory to consider what other consequences of population growth there may be.

Remember how you treated Brooksley Born Larry? Or your head in the sand approach to the excesses of wall street in 2005-2006? And the money that led to it?

Only the fringe hates capitalism, every man and woman has a right to their own business, and 95% of Americans understand that.

Its the crony capitalism that permeates our leadership that stinks, and the bailouts to huge entities on the backs of the working poor. One day someone will write the history of financial crisis, and you Bernanke, Geithner Rubin and Greenspan will certainly be the villains.

The problem in the USA is simple. What we’ve got now isn’t the post war capitalism we all grew up with. It’s a predatory monster where the government regulations that should protect the integrity of the system have been watered down and ignored. The Tea Partiests have it exactly backwards. Government is not the problem, it’s the application of radical, out of control, no rules business practices that has left us in the current morass. The truth is there for all to see. And make no mistake, when such a large fraction of our young people lose faith in their ability to succeed and thrive in such an environment the nation is in for real trouble down the road.

Most comments here are right on. “Capitalism isn’t working” because this isn’t capitalism.

Capitalism runs itself. It means the market decides who wins with superior products and services. In the current system, the government provides the public’s money to support industries that have no business being in business (solar, ethanol, etc), or companies that made such poor decisions that they don’t deserve to be in business (GM, large financial companies, etc).

Rewarding bad decisions with a cashier’s check is not capitalism. Giving bail-out money to a successful company’s competitor is not capitalism. Saving union jobs by bailing out a company’s failure is not capitalism. Creating laws or regulations that will only be enforced on your political opponent’s donors is not capitalism.

I was going to take some shots at Summers, but others here have better stated most of the points I would make. But, Larry, try, if you can get out of your shallow perspective clouded by your own self-perception of brilliance, to look cross-culturally. Capitalism is winning, across the board. ‘The rise of the rest’ is being done in a capitalist fashion, though they are experimenting with the flavoring. Good on them.

Capitalism as part of the national polity is seen by many as suspect because of the distortions foisted upon the economic system by the financial markets. Wall Street is where the money (read “salaries”) is. Plus, the $2 billion or so in corporate funds that are squirreled away on the sidelines (where they reap substantial margins in non-manufacturing investments that do little for job growth) is also part of the problem. Another is the replacement of the Glass-Steagall regulatory framework by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act in 1999, an effort that was cheered on by you and the likes of Goldman-Sachs. Of course the end result has been the unbridled greed of the banking “industry,” which continues on today, despite recent attempts to strengthen the regulatory environment.

What it really boils down to is not playing by the rules. THAT’S IT. Its like playing a game of football where the rules are set, but nobody plays by them. When one team doesn’t convert on 3rd down the officials say “ummm lets give them 5 downs” and when they don’t get the first down, we change another rule. The game would be madness, there would be no winners. Or perhaps in todays trend of striving for “fairness” both teams should win. It reality though capitalism is based on some losing and some winning. If you work hard you can have a good life. Its just some people do not believe what they have is good. That is an argument about culture though.You do not need to have a house, great car, and an Iphone to be happy. try an apt/condo, normal car and a normal phone. Its about learning to live within our means and not hating people because they are more successful. You get what you earn in a capitalist society. That maybe insulting to some and encouraging to others. I am not well off, i struggle in life, but I can honestly say I haven’t done “everything” right. I screwed around and now I am paying the price. Second chances are hard in this society, but if I had done myself right in the beginning I would be well off and fine. Like the phoenix, captialism survives through rebirth. The idea that some will fail and from the ashes emerge a stronger, more dedicated person/business. Its just that some people don’t understand that, and seek for nobody to fail ever. Its like a festering wound that you do nothing about because you don’t want to lose the leg. Well your killing the whole body by putting off the envitable.

Unchecked population growth stokes economic as well as many other serious problems on the planet. The issue spans all countries. It leads to a western population that increasingly looks like the characters depicted in “Idiocracy” (growing pool of under educated, unable to compete for jobs against less expensive overseas workers). It burdens our social welfare system with legions of single parent / teen parent children (1/2 of all US children receive WIC services!). Low income (no income) households have poor likelihood of upward mobility for the children, perpetuating a cycle of poverty and increasing financial burden on society. In the 3rd world, overpopulation causes literal starvation and ill health for humans, and rapid destruction of ecological preserves (reducing atmospheric replenishment and robbing animals of habitat critical for their survival). Our unchecked population growth is killing our national budget, our way of life, our environment, the animal kingdom and indeed many of us.

Larry Summers poses an interesting question regarding the validity of capitalism: is it an inherently flawed model? Or, can it be managed by proper fiscal and monetary policies? While Mr. Summers states his believe that it’s really an issue of proper management, he misses the opportunity to reflect on himself and his own industry. Financial markets operate mostly by a simple rule: if you find a way to make money, do it for as much as you can for as long as you can before:

1) Others catch up with you (like LCTM using mathematical models to exploit derivatives markets in the 1990s)

2) You take on too much risk, and basically light yourself on fire and the village around you (like the recent mortgage crisis of 2008) or

3) The government steps in and limits your ability to exploit the market (like Goldman Sachs and their nano-trading shenanigans this past year).

The inherent flaw of capitalism is that, if left unbridled, it can be a savage beast that eats the class of consumers who provide demand for products, or simply just eat itself.

A later point regarding the shift from manufacturing to services, in which Mr. Summers makes a great leap of logic is:

“As fewer and fewer people are needed to meet the population’s demand for goods like appliances and clothing, it is natural that more and more people work in producing goods like health care and education…”

This rise in efficiency did not cause the expansion in the education and health care industries, it was companies exporting manufacturing abroad to reduce costs, and other individuals seeing an opportunity to tap into a potentially profitable sector with constant demand, i.e. the demand for products like cars may fluctuate, however people always get sick and need to see a doctor. As a result, we have seen a huge growth in this industry and a reason why our economy is suffering under such high health-care costs.

Mr. Summers argument on why capitalism isn’t working starts off on good-footing, however he quickly wanders from a logical path and gets lost in the weeds.

Capitalism is inherently unfair. After all what is fair about eliminating your competition and trying to become monopolies to have total price control, yet that is the ultimate in capitalism.

What has really happened is a gross failure of government regulation to level the playing field to give new companies equal access to markets. And, that has only been caused by Republican (GOP) Presidents and GOP Congressional control used in turn to eliminate economic regulations (as in the GOP repeal of laws and regulations put forth during the Great Depression to prevent it being repeated), or to underfund the regulatory agencies, especially the ones that regulate the economy to make them impotent.

For example, the SEC settles too many cases for pennies on the dollar simply because they lack the funds to hire enough lawyers to bring the cases to court, and companies trying to evade regulation and consequences for ignoring them know this and take advantage of it to bargain for low fines relative to the gains received from illegal behavior. All this achieves is creating incentives for more widespread cheating.

The economic regulators should have unrestricted funding based on their ability to collect penalties both for the government and investors. Like the operation of many state Insurance Commissioners the funding of these agencies should be from a surcharge on relevant transactions to recover the cost of operations. The SEC for example should be funded by a surcharge on stock transactions and bank regulators should be funded by a surcharge on lending whether to the Federal Reserve in excess of mandatory deposits or to customers. The U. S. Treasury regulator function should be funded by a surcharge on all global dollar transactions. Mining inspections should be funded by a surcharge per ton of mined materials extracted. And other regulatory agencies should similarly be funded by the industries they regulate. All that each needs otherwise is a revolving line of credit or funding to support changes in regulatory agency needs between annual surcharge adjustments.

Congress and the President will always have the joint means to cap spending in one way or another if regulatory agencies get carried away, but that should not be easy under House and Senate rules. Each body should collaborate to form a joint Senate-House committee to oversee after the fact the use of surcharges. Though, the truth is regulatory agencies have their own incentive to limit spending since rapid growth in their activity can make them targets for oversight and ot create job instability within agencies. People do not join government to have their jobs come and go every year.

Two points:
Capitalism is about property of the means of production and of freedom to run a business. Is this not working any more?
What should be the alternative?

Work and jobs: isn’t it one of the successes of capitalism (or of technology) that less work is required to produce the goods and services sold (and bought) on the market?
But productivity gains may become a social failure when all the available workforce is no more needed.
Should capitalism set itself the goal to employ people rather than to develop, produce and sell goods and services in an efficient way?

It’s not about Capitalism; it’s about fairness. Capitalism was considered fair, or mostly fair, up until the bank bailout. That, and the perception of gross favoritism by the government on behalf of the banks tipped the balance against the belief the system was working for everybody. The bank bailout is the very origin of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Astonishingly, bankers and wall street types are still in denial about this.

I suspect even communism would still exist if there had been at least a perception of fairness. Social welfare states exist in countries where there exists a belief in the fairness of their government (e.g. Sweden). Why is the discussion about economic systems when it should really be about corrupt practices committed by real individuals and real corporations?

Looking forward, Larry Summers is correct. And it would be good to improve/reduce the cost of healthcare. There are good ways to do that with sufficient political will, which is a big if.

The important thing is that there is a significant change in economics that is similar to the shift from an essential agriculturally based economy to a industrial economy. The good thing then was that the efficiencies that ended the agricultural economy also supplied jobs in the industrial economy. Today, the move from an industrial economy to a service based economy doesn’t have the same advantage.

I would say, and it is my own opinion, that modern macro economics is based on industrial economics and the stimulations to the economy expressed do not exist for a service based economy.

Take tax breaks. When manufacting was based nationally, then giving manufacturing tax breaks during a slow down worked because businesses could retain more of their workers. With no manufacturing here, then tax breaks do nothing because businesses are market based and their manufacturing is abroad, so jobs are not saved.

In the macro economics model, money is pushed into the market to stimulate growth. This is usually done through passing it through the industrial complex. When Reagon invaded Panama to remove a corrupt government they planned to also push millions of dollars into the Panama economy to stimulate growth. But when they got there they found that the Panama economy was based on a bunch of services and there was no place to put the money. Macro economics has the same problem today in America.

A big problem is the banks are encouraging small business to finance with credit cards, often over 20 percent interest and variable. We have lost the personal banker relationship prevalent in the past.

Capitalism is not working because you and your thug constituents central planning failed. You were a big part of this and you have audacity to say that you feel that planned monetary actions can right the capsizing ship. Shame on you.

As someone mentioned, the reason why capitalism isn’t working, is because this isn’t capitalism! Innovation or delivering a quality product or service is rewarded in a properly run capitalistic society. Otherwise, the company should fail, not receive a bailout. The consumer brings the demand, so the consumer should have the power. Right now, the corporations have the power and the ability to merely take money from the consumer via bailouts and subsidies (not to mention change the rules to benefit themselves and drive out competition, ultimately hurting the consumer (see Monsonto and others).

The practice of capitalism is doing exactly what it is designed and structured to do. In the absence of BASIC morality (Truth, Honesty, Integrity, Humanity….) nothing else matters other than creating profit (making money) and then distributing this wealth to “STAKEHOLDERS” who quickly adapt through narcissistic acquiescence. Once the systemic greed becomes exposed and realized, the “CUSTOMERS” (who are not “STAKEHOLDERS”)are left holding the bag and or eliminated. Sooner or later there is nothing left to “FEED” off of and the system cannibalizes itself into chaos and implodes.

Of course, the biggest argument FOR bailouts is that it saves jobs. However, what is the result? The survival of mediocre or failed products by badly run companies. Is that how we compete in a global economy? Is that what we want?

The gist of capitalism is that it improves the lot of the average person. From a global perspective metrics such as average income, poverty, literacy, age, number of children, etc. have vastly improved in the last 30 years and continue to improve after the “financial crisis”.

Capitalism is humming on all engines as 7 billion people are moving forward. Sure a small subset of people in the US and Europe may see living standards decrease a few percentage points but all this doom and gloom is ridiculous. Capitalism always produces winners and losers on the theory that at least the losers have choice. If Larry cant straight up and look at stats and see the world is better in 2012 than 2008 he’s transformed into a full US politician versus an academic.

You mean why are we losing to communist China? Dismantling of the regulations. Just like the most affluent neighgorhoods in any given city are also the most tightly regulated (with self-generated covenants and rules)…so are the most economically fit nations.

Sweden = high regulations, strong economy.

Haiti = no regulations, no economy.

The GOP plan is to basically turn America into Haiti. Where we’re all customers of someone else’s products.

Summers states that health, education, and social protection (military?) are eating our lunch money. The cost of housing, healthcare, food and energy, and education have increased in relation to our paychecks. The simple (simplistic?) path is to remake our society to reduce the costs that are causing problems.

Regarding education: The Kahn Academy demonstrates that math and science can be taught using videos and software. Given this technology we should be able to teach the population with far fewer instructors. It is probable that the same is true of history, social studies, and most other areas short of English composition and art. Many consider the most important part of education to be the socialization process. Teachers could organize the development of collaboration skills while computers teach subject areas. Use nationwide exit exams from high school to give colleges and employers means to compare applicants. The average grade should be 50% correct. Current tests are too dumbed down to differentiate real achievers from the students who did the minimum to get an ‘A’. Scores could be a matrix showing strengths and weaknesses in sub-topics.

Regarding health care: The healthcare industry is focused on reducing costs, which is a good start. Unfortunately, the demand and incentives for increased care overwhelm the pressure to reduce costs. My understanding is that the majority of health care costs stem from life style choices. Reward the folks who make healthy choices with substantially reduced health insurance premiums (i.e. if 75% of health care costs are self-induced, then give a 75% reduction in premiums). Couple this with free consults from nurse practitioners who advise folks on how to get into the healthy premium program. People who choose the expensive approach can only blame themselves. In addition, high users of healthcare should be visited by nurse practitioners. At some point I would like to see individuals pay an extra co-pay when their health care is excessive (statistics show that health is about the same or reduced when procedure is used) so patients will participate in lowering health care costs.

Housing prices increase to the amount people are willing to pay. Americans live in increasingly large houses with fewer residents, generally to place themselves in more prestigious locations. Government can’t address this; the American people have to decide if they want to devote their resources to housing.

Energy has to be rethought from inside out. Cars are 20% efficient. Too much energy is wasted in heating. Buses go empty when there are traffic jams. Mass transit should be more convenient and comfortable than driving in traffic (e.g. clean with a wifi hotspot, tables and cool music). Personally, I would like to see energy prices increase until the pain is sufficiently high for folks to seek new solutions.

Food: Food prices depend heavily on energy. Little can be done about this. One thing that can be done is to discourage the practice of using corn to make ethanol.

Military: Overall, this topic is too large to discuss here. (as if the others aren’t) Give the Pentagon freedom to reduce its costs, without interference from congress. Veterans aren’t the only ones who have sacrificed for their country and we all will have to make sacrifices to get through this. Health care co-pays should be means based. Again there have to be incentives to live a healthy lifestyle. Retirement payments shouldn’t start until the employee turns 68 (or whatever the current social security age is).

Income inequality: The tax code should be modified to remove special interest. Capital gains and dividends should be taxed at the same rate as regular income. As pressure is released from the equity bubble I expect that hedge funds will not be as profitable. The facebook and Google types who make their living through genuine creativity should continue to be rewarded. CEO compensation is another issue.

I’ve brainstormed for years, trying to think of employment solutions in light that productivity gains have lowered the need for workers. The only solution I have thought of is to provide farming communities for those at the end of their resources. Homes for all where all work to provide food. Sunlight, fresh air, honest work, and companionship. High maintenance foods can be grown for sale at a premium price. At the faith based version, guidance for spiritual development. There are worse ways to live a life.

While I like the thesis of the article, the rest doesn’t really ring true. Of course our political system is a democratic republic, our financial system is capitalistic. It can be argued that we do not need to lose our sovereignty or our identity to forgo the capitalist financial system model. China is dabbling in the opposite, a communist government with a faux capitalist financial system.

Capitalism is only as good as the morals of the participants (e.g. shareholders, board members, employees, customers). Capitalism in and of itself is simply an unbiased aggregation of private transactions. We should not blame capitalism for our failures, we must blame ourselves. It’s our own weaknesses that will cause the suffering of the masses.

By any sensible definition of capitalism, China (and indeed any other successful country in the world for that matter) is capitalist ie. private ownership of the means of production with the motivation of generating a profit. The centrally-planned decision making of communist governments are responsible for some of the worst economic disasters of the 20th century (millions starving in USSR and China).

What we are experiencing is not a failure of capitalism but a rebalancing of: unsustainable indebtedness in the West and imbalances between the western world and the developing world. The closer one comes to true capitalism, an individual consumes as much as they produce (whether they be in China, India or the US) and it is not surprising that those that are most disillusioned with capitalism are those that are least able to compete.

The only point I do have sympathy with is the disproportionate influence big business has on governments and the excessive powers governments have over the liberty of the individual. Governments are the only entities in our soceity that can legally extort wealth from us.

It’s about the government not being representative of the people. Taxation without representation is tyranny. The minimum wage is oppressing people and keeping them below the poverty line. It is much worse for service industry professionals whose employers are allowed to pay them much less than the minimum wage because they claim that they earn tips. That is unfair. Why should they have faith in capitalism?

Even if people had capital to invest they are double taxed on their income and capital gains. The banks are crippling our economy charging exhorbitant ATM fees to withdraw cash from our own accounts. That’s your capitalism at work.

If the politians were freed from their PAC masters and ignorance they would realize that tort reform is the key to solving the health care problem. Doctors must pay too much for malpractice insurance because everyone (even felons) are allowed to sue anyone else. We need to end contingency fee litigation and go to a loser pays all costs in any lawsuit. We need to limit suit benefits to $250,000 or 25 times their annual income.

Drug costs in the U.S. are due to 5 years of FDA mandated testing before drugs can be released in the U.S. Allow drug companies to release drugs immediately. They are the ones who are responsible if their drugs do harm anyway.

Immigration is easy to solve as part of social protection if everyone in the U.S. was required to carry a passport or U.S. ID card at all times.

@McJefferson – “The closer one comes to true capitalism, an individual consumes as much as they produce ”

This completely disregards the community nature of the human animal. We work together, we share, and our efforts can result in a direct or indirect contribution. To think that each individual who consumes X should also contribute X is a recipe for disaster. It would be more fair to let each consume what they must and each contribute what they can. Yes, that means in any given snapshot in a capitalist day that the rich should pay more than they consume while the poor pay less. In fact, being rich is stored consumption. They can also borrow, which is another form of consumption. In that sense, rich actually consume MORE than they contribute.

I agree with several other posters who claim that the problem is not with capitalism, rather the problem is regarding a financial system in which the elite players are not subject to the law or rules or mores regarding honor, integrity and decency.

The recent fraud that led to a near death experience for the world’s economy enriched the elite players by millions or tens of millions of dollars each… year after year after year.

When the fraud was discovered, the greatest harm was shifted to citizen taxpayers. Those who should have been stripped of all their assets via RICO prosecutions and subsequently imprisoned quickly set about trying to do everything they can to prevent regulations that might save America from their wild ventures in the future.

Any politician currently running for office should read the comments posted here. The theme of “lack of fairness” is undeniable. Capitalism is valuable to our society only if it is fair. Government regulations should promote a fair and balanced playing field for all market participants, customers included.

SeaWa writes: “This completely disregards the community nature of the human animal. We work together, we share, and our efforts can result in a direct or indirect contribution.”

The human animal also engages in infanticide and gericide when food supplies are short. This has been documented in multiple tribes around the world, over multiple centuries. So…. should we trust the animal within us? Or should we grow to become something a little more….. gasp…. civilised.

Yes, the problem is of systemic corruption. Particularly the ability of Government to become subordinated to the will of organizations which are for sale to the highest bidder rather than tied to one ethnic, racial, or cultural group. The Government behaves more like a Chamber of Commerce than a national institution.

Perhaps it is international capitalism that has failed rather than the notion of free markets subject to predictable law. Something has failed and failed badly. It is very difficult to allocate the failure between capitalism and government.

The failure is bad enough and deep enough that the system will have to change. The question of to what is not really relevant at all. It is not a planned change but rather a catastrophic failure. This last point is what capitalism’s friends do simply not seem to understand. Change is coming whether you like it or not.

Reuters
Please update Mr Summers pic-you have him looking like he’s 25; when we’ve seen him on tv he looks more like a robust(or is it rotund) mid 50’s. Also are there no great economists or great thinkers that can be found anywhere but Harvard or Princeton?
What about someone from Nebraska or New Mexico or Oregon. Remember there are 50 USA states each with great teaching centers. We get so sick of hearing from those that got us into the mess explain why we are in the mess. We love you Reuters but expect more from you.

Traditional healthy capitalism is balanced with community needs while the current form of ugly-headed capitalism is self-seving and reckless at balancing community needs. The latter just starves the (consumer) goose that lays golden eggs.

The 18-29 age group regardless of race or income status wants a decent job locally but finds the current capitalism favoring cheap labor in the form of – offshored labor, H1B labor in US and illegal immigrants in US.

Just give it time and the needed change will come from this self-correcting system in the form of a social revolution with the use of simple and effective social media tools by the community-sensitive public at large.

Capitalism is NOT inherently “unfair”. It’s promise is that of equal opportunity and not equal achievement. No government has ever achieved the latter, although Communism came very close to making poverty and hopelessness universal. You mix up the game of “Monopoly” (which would not be popular were it not “fair”) with economic system of Capitalism, a “pure” form of which exists no where. There is a very simple single “rule” for success…find a need and fill it! Absent undue government interference, always works, aways will.

If you would throw out and abandon the single economic “system” that has demonstrated the capacity to create a bigger economic pie (when all alternatives merely re-divide an economic poe of fixed size), what would you propose as an alternative to replace it? Do you REALLY believe our federal government has the insight necessary to change the terrain of the “playing field”, much less even KNOW what is level or not? Few bureaucrats have legitimate experience in business, but ALL think they know “best” for the country. Sounds to me like you come from such a background.

The SEC does NOT lack “…the funds to hire enough lawyers to bring the cases to court”. I’m not a lawyer, and I can file a case without one. Yes, current costs can be prohibitive but the solution is not more and more lawyers. It is to make the system more like Small Claims, where lawyers are not permitted.

Why should the government OR the people have to argue right and wrong in what is, essentially, a foreign language if we are all ultimately to be helt to a common standard…that “igniorance of the law is no excuse”? If that be true, all laws and statutes MUST, by definition be understandable by the average lay citizen if he/she is presumed competent to understand same sufficiently to be properly accountable for non-compliance. If judges were today, as in the past, accountable for enforcing the law AS WRITTEN and according to established precedent, the number of lawsuits would plummet (everyone would know, basically, the difference between right and wrong) as would the demand for the legal profession (which today occupies an obscene percentage of our Congress and our Supreme Court). Talk about conflict of interest!

The very idea that “…economic regulators should have unrestricted funding…” is ludicrous. I would, however, agree to a strict cost/benefit arrangement to assure regulations are properly interpreted and adequately enforced, such as those pertaining to Medicare and Medicaid fraud. Such can be assurred without being totally open-ended as you suggest.

I utterly and totally reject your suggestion that “…regulatory agencies have their own incentive to limit spending…”. I challenge you to identify a single agency that is today of less people and/or expense to “prove” the actual existence of such incentive.

People whose work product is primarily inconvenience and expense for producers seem utterly without a clue as to how to justify to taxpayers their own position at the public teat. That may well be impossible in most cases, and probably why their union is necessary to protect jobs of questionable benefit and excessive benefits.

A convenient truth is that not everyone needs to work full time. Full employment is not necessary for the production of sufficient goods and services for everyone. Not everyone needs to work full-time, but everyone needs money to buy these goods and services.

A solution: The Federal Government would expand Social Security to make unconditional payments of $13,628 each year to every adult US citizen to provide a modicum of financial independence to everyone. This program can be financed entirely by cutting existing federal welfare associated programs and changing the federal personal income tax to a flat rate of 18% but allowing no deductions. This $2.975 trillion per year program would not add to nor reduce the federal deficit. Other potential avenues for federal deficit reduction such as Defense, Medicare, Medicaid, foreign aid, wealth taxes or gas taxes have not been preempted. The figure of $13,628 per year per adult was chosen because after 18% income tax it yields $11,175 per adult, which would amount to the 2011 Federal Poverty Level (FPL) of $22,350 for a family of 4 (2 adults plus 2 children). The numbers can work. See www.federalincomesupplement.com for detailed calculations.

It is different from welfare or unemployment as it is paid out to everyone. There is no stigma. It is not lost by working. It is different than a negative income tax because it is issued as a separate payment similar to how Alaska pays oil dividends to each resident. It can be characterized as a birthright, a common share of America that pays a dividend, or as an inheritance, or as a trust fund.

Capitalism stopped working ever since the end of the cold war. During the cold war the capitalist West was trying to prove not only to produce better cars but also happier workers. After the demise of the USSR the western society has became a society in which the winners take all. The winners are the 1 per cent. The earnings of super sportsmen, stars and the captains of corporations have skyrocketed; the average workers have seen their incomes going nowhere and lost ground to workers from the developing countries. Some states in the U.S. have even passed laws to prevent “disadvantaged” citizens to vote; this was inconceivable during the cold war. I guess a competition for the ideology supremacy make capitalists kinder.

@Pete_Murphy: “because of economists’ steadfast refusal to ever again give credence to the notion that there may be a problem with never-ending population growth”

Are you joking? The rest of your comment makes SOME sense to me, but this path is very well-worn in the annals of economics and sociology. The perils of overpopulation are overplayed, especially at a time when most of the industrialised world is experiencing population stagnation or decline, and most of the third world is experiencing unsustainable population growth.

There’s a proven negative correlation between material wealth and population growth. This correlation applies both within and between populations.

What are your solutions?

From Mr. Summers’s article:
“Indeed the observation that even Chinese manufacturing employment appears well below the level of 15 years ago suggests that the problem’s roots lie deep with the evolution of technology.”

We’re living in technologically and industrially advanced times in which the 1% or the 0.1% can get vast and disproportionate returns out of miniscule efforts on their part, and while a few politically well-connected and patronized persons can extract ill-gotten gains on an industrial scale while others starve…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16472 310

Do we want a balanced and harmonious society?

Do we reject the notion that humanity should divide into castes of perpetually wealthy and idle aristocrats vs. castes of perpetually impoverished workers? With 10% of society living the high life inside gated communities and country clubs (a lifestyle they could not sustain without their working-class servants); while the other 90% live as prisoners in an industrial waste-land, too poor to visit family, educate themselves into greater productivity or maintain the health necessary to be useful to society for extended periods of time, their only function in society being as an underclass for the rich to draw upon to do their bidding, while the rich play all the peons and their machines off against each other?

I reject this notion.

The solution must include:

INCREASE taxation of the wealthy and INCREASE support for the honest, hard-working poor through universal education and healthcare – which will be a benefit to rich and poor alike.

There is no measure in which this policy would not make American society more fair. There is no policy that lacks these vital ingredients, that can do the job.

Capitalism was right for the 20th Century, at least for the West while they had the Soviet Union and various other flavours of socialism to keep the capitalists acting in good faith.

With Bolshevism defeated (leaving the old military-industrial complex to either stir up new conflicts or face long-term decline), and with economies-of-scale on the rise in all industries and businesses; we’re on seriously shaky ground thinking that our 20th Century system is still fit for purpose today.

The grandchildren of the wealthy will suffer in poverty with the rest of us, if they do not repent. They’ll find themselves one day, on the wrong side of that iron fence…

The problem is twofold. First, it is institutionalized corruption, not capitalism that is eating away at the system. Second, it is the way people like yourself–the financial elite who have mastered the rules of the game. You’ve obfuscated the lines between capitalism and corruption, between utility banking and casino banking, between genuine democracy and accountability with deregulation and corporate interests.

Everyone I know, no matter their career or lack thereof has, a home with air conditioning, multiple cars, a cell phone (usually a smart phone), multiple computers (usually wireless), multiple video games, a Wii, and since most Americans are overweight being fed doesn’t seem to be an issue either. Nor are decent clothes, shoes (usually name brand sneakers), the list is endless. Am I ignoring the bottom 1% or so that are truly and realistically impoverished? Yes. But they’d exist no matter what grand Utopian “ideal” society existed. Furthermore, as per usual the truly needy aren’t the ones protesting. The vast majority of whiny protestors are the spoiled rotten delerious outcome of a permissive and overtly self-centered society that has convinced itself every roadblock they encounter in life is someone else’s fault.

Larry Summers…should not be paid to write anything of this sort. If you want the truth go ask Chomsky…not pawns and idiots. I don’t expect you will but it would be a welcome change and bring some balance to the debate. Larry can tells which way he sees the US economy going and we’ll place bets on the opposite side. . .

“Markets have inherent and well-known inefficiencies. One factor is failure to calculate the costs to those who do not participate in transactions. These “externalities” can be huge. That is particularly true for financial institutions.
Their task is to take risks, calculating potential costs for themselves. But they do not take into account the consequences of their losses for the economy as a whole.

Hence the financial market “underprices risk” and is “systematically inefficient,” as John Eatwell and Lance Taylor wrote a decade ago, warning of the extreme dangers of financial liberalization and reviewing the substantial costs already incurred – and also proposing solutions, which have been ignored.

The threat became more severe when the Clinton administration repealed the Glass-Steagall act of 1933, thus freeing financial institutions “to innovate in the new economy,” in Clinton’s words — and also “to self-destruct, taking down with them the general economy and international confidence in the US banking system,” financial analyst Nomi Prins adds.

The unprecedented intervention of the Fed may be justified or not in narrow terms, but it reveals, once again, the profoundly undemocratic character of state capitalist institutions, designed in large measure to socialise cost and risk and privatize profit, without a public voice.

That is, of course, not limited to financial markets. The advanced economy as a whole relies heavily on the dynamic state sector, with much the same consequences with regard to risk, cost, profit, and decisions, crucial features of the economy and political system.” some balance to the debate…

Capitalism, by its nature, requires the free market pricing mechanism to function properly. It is disingenuous to criticize capitalism as flawed due to the problems the United States is experiencing when this depression is arguably the result of the LACK of a free market.

At its core, a free market requires price discovery. The marketplace must be allowed to clear all prices. However, the most important price in the market… the price of money… has been manipulated for decades by central banks. This distortion generates ripple effects throughout every decision-making process… every industry… which can only result in misappropriated resources, which then must inevitably result in depression.

The response, unfortunately, has been more central planning to try to avoid the symptoms of central planning. Please restore free market capitalism and give it a chance to work before dismissing the concept.

Solemn and sagacious words from one of America’s most serious people. Words that betray a shallow intellect, a failure to apply even the most basic macroeconomic theory and no attempt to provide a plan or program to address the malaise afflicting our great nation. We are being led by a group of brilliant, energetic, facile dance instructors, forward, backward, side to side.

Overuse of leverage is the main culprit of the 2008 Great Recession, as it has been in any great collapse. Any investor knows the dangers of a margin call, and we have just seen a major margin call worldwide. Summers also ignores how the huge growth of derivatives since 1980s (an extension of credit and leverage) have turned investment markets into speculators’ roulette wheel.

The US Tax Structure since the 1980s has reduced short term capital gains and derivative income/gains by more than 70% while at the same time tripled the payroll tax on middle income AMericans. The “carried interest” use by hedge funds and private equity, plus off-shore tax havens have allowed speculators to pay extremely low tax rates, thus pushing out the traditional long term investor which is vital to capitalism. Summers can take direct credit for this trend.

Finally, the US government subsidizes through low tax rates, outright cash grants and extremely low regulations the very industries that have not provided any growth to the US labor force for over 30 years: oil/gas, agriculture and real estate. Depletion allowance, 1031 exchanges, crop subsidies, etc. all distort the market economy and shift resources away from viable industries. Of course, this policy is only in place because of the huge dollars political campaigns receive from these industries.

Capitalism would work if we control speculation, promote a fair tax policy and do not subsidize healthy industries.

There a several comments about the system’s not ‘fair’ and the bailout rigged the system. But you have to remember why the government bailed out the banks…because the banks threatened to take down the entire system.
It’s not so much about unfairness, as it is about a system that’s so corrupt, so powerful, so entrenched, that they can literally blackmail the entire capitalist system…because they have that ability.
The deregulation of capital markets created a monster that’s eating up all the money and making any government checks ineffective. These out-of-control powers may fail under their own corrupt weight…but when they do, it will collapse on top of all of us.

The biggest problem is, as I see it, is trying to integrate capitalism betweem countries that use it and those who don’t. If you have true competitive markets things work, but to make it work requires a country with a strong government with backbone. The US does not have a strong government and by allowing hoarding of commodities and stock manipulation it works poorly.

Where is the mention of the government subsidies, transparent and fraudelent dealings with Wall Street and banking institutions, greed, and lack of the very source of financial stability in a capitalistic society……..TAXES, monitoring of instuitutions to limit greed and fraud and the lobbying of big corporate entities to continue on their quest for profits where greed and fraud are commonplace?

Capitalism cannot survive without the working man to keep the cycle of invention and consumption working. But the greedy have forgotten that in their quest. They are high on $14 billion in profits for one quarter and the fact that a politician stated that “corporations are people too.”

We are becoming laughable to every progressive nation because of our hatred, ineptness and lack of compassion for our own people. Yet we have stepped into the shoes of the “savior” of all nations from people just like us.

Capitalism that is well regulated and offers severe penalties for those who go outside those regulations or boundaries works best for the masses and the countries in general. Greedy unregulated capitalism just breeds avarice uncaring screw-you-it’s-all-mine CEOS and Wall Street jerks who think they are gods and everyone is just dumb serfs. Greedy capitalism offers countless opportunties for the unscrupulous and scam artists to take over and everyone gets hurt. Tell Phil and Wendy Graham to take a hike and reverse Glass-Steagall now.

I have been thinking about plunder lately. I am beginning to believe that capitalism works only while plunder is viable. Where it begins to break down is when resources become limited or (as in the case of the environment) erroneously has no value at all assigned to it.

We have not had capitalism in this country for nearly 100 years. We have had corporatism. And it is working just fine. The 95% is increasingly improverished and politically impotent. The 5% is totally in control and totally global.
The first really big push toward corporatism was under Pres. Wilson who used WWI to push through government control of business. FDR used the Depression to extend controls. Now Democrats and Republicans are in bed together with the Boss and are making him happy.

We do not have a system of “market capitalism,” Summers, and so long as you keep beating that drum, your credibility is exactly zero. The system we bear is one of corrupt crony capitalism, wherein wealth is no longer based upon production, but upon the creation of fictional financial vehicles to prestidigitate “profits,” and the criminal bribery and control of public officials and distortion of public policy to ensure that real revenues are transferred to the corporate coffers, rather than to schools, bridges and water treatment plants.

Your propaganda above is nothing but an attempt to rationalize the continued dysfunctions of that system, while throwing a bone to the losers under that system; “Oh, maybe we should improve health care a bit for you all, and then maybe you will like us.”

You want real change? Then do away with the prison-industrial complex and the insane drug war. Stop killing people overseas, quit waging war on everyone, and eviscerate the military-industrial complex. Destroy the sick-care industry, with the enormously destructive partnership of destructive “foods” and destructive drugs and GMOs, the criminal FDA that attacks health and promotes the illnesses by which Big Pharma profits, and the perniciously subsidized Big Ag industry that is sealing our fate as we speak. Reject a political system that takes its bribes from the richest corporations and tailors its public policy accordingly, that treats corporations as natural persons under the Bill of Rights and elevates their status over natural persons, that maintains and accelerates the police state and destruction of personal liberties (of natural persons), and that cares nothing for the people who are their nominal constituency.

I don’t want chicken bones, Summers. I want heads to roll. Keep talking. Maybe you can convince yourself, but you are getting nowhere with us.

This is an outstanding article. Why couldn’t Summers articulate this when he was working for Obama? Obama’s economic plans are chaos. He’s changed advisers so often one is left thinking he can’t find anyone who agrees with his irrational and counterfactual theories.

We ought to adopt the equalize-now plan and then let the market do it’s thing with everyone starting out equal.

“the politico-economic system of the United States today is so far removed from laissez-faire capitalism that it is closer to the system of a police state. The ability of the media to ignore all of the massive government interference that exists today and to characterize our present economic system as one of laissez faire and economic freedom marks it as, if not profoundly dishonest, then as nothing less than delusional.”

“That said, sharp increases in unemployment beyond the business cycle—one in six American men between 25 and 54 are likely to be out of work even after the U.S. economy recovers—along with dramatic rises in the share of income going to the top 1 and even the top .01 per cent of the population and declining social mobility do raise serious questions about the fairness of capitalism.”

I must have missed something. Where is it written that a quality of capitalism is “fairness”?

Unfortunately Larry, your article contained few of these intellectual components and is largely undecipherable because of this. No facts, no comparisons, no inferences, no history, no solid analysis…you are unbelievable because of this.

Capitalism since 1500 has a solid history which is knowable by reading, for example, Niall Ferguson’s Cash Nexus, or his Rothchilds books among others. And if you know that history you can use the intellectual components listed above and filter Niall’s history and something like Joseph Stiglitz or Ja Hoon Chang’s book, “The 23 Things They Didn’t Tell You About Capitalism.” For the untrained eye; the above readings are a right-wing economic historian with left-wing economics…something one must do to be unbiased, right?

But I digress, we all can see capitalism is a fail – or at best only a partial success. We can observe the gambling and cronisms and the largely unaccountable nature of banking and the investment community. We can observe a lack of fairness and ego-driven excess, too. But the real problem is that capitalism doesn’t solve all problems…and was never meant to.

Until people realize that chasing profit is, well, ultimately unprofitable because it requires unsustainable amounts of non-renewable natural resources pilfered from the various people and countries of the world. In short, capialistic wealth is created by socializing business costs and expenses while privitizing profits. And Larry, if you are ok with that, then we be good to move ahead. Otherwise, we need to rethink things.

Pure capitalism has never worked for the benefit of society as a whole. The golden age of the American middle class was during a period when capitalism was moderately constrained and controlled with systemic limits on monopoly and personal wealth. Remember anti-trust laws, regulated airlines, and taxes that prevented the uncontrolled concentration of wealth in ever fewer hands? Western capitalism was tempered by the very large presence of the competing political system of communism over a large part of the world, and professed (falsely, of course) to represent the true interests of working class people everywhere. When the USSR collapsed it was trumpeted as the victory of pure capitalism over all shades of socialism, when in reality it was the victory of a hybrid system of capitalism tempered with a moderate level of social engineering and significant formal limits on corporate power and personal wealth. Unfortunately, everyone drank the Kool-Aid of the “decisive victory of pure capitalism” myth, and we dismantled economic and social controls that had worked very well for a majority of Americans for many years. Now we’re back to essentially the same situation as the Gilded Age: disposable workers, wealth and information media concentrated in very few, very powerful hands, and corporations dictating the terms of their own “oversight” to government.

To clarify my position: Capitalism can still work in the 21st Century, perhaps better than all other systems. But Capitalism as it now operates needs some serious recalibration. If we are going to say that anything about 15% taxation as a proportion of GDP is “socialism”, then the USA was socialist during its best years yet. Oddly, we’re not running at 15% taxation and 25% spending… This isn’t socialism or capitalism: it’s running on empty, and it’s destroying the confidence of well-informed capitalists! No wonder the vehicle is still stalling…

15% federal taxation, 25% federal spending on GDP (with additional taxation and spending at state level); is neither socialism nor capitalism. It’s mildly socialist spending coupled with radically capitalist revenues. It’s not going to work. The rich will just run for cover, convert all their assets into gold, and stay in their foxholes until the storm shows serious signs of receding…

There’s a difference between capitalism and the free market. The US is definitely capitalist but it’s markets are not free. With a handful of telco’s and a half dozen nation-wide banks, the natural course of capitalism is to grow, dominate, and create as much of a monopoly as possible. Smaller companies are bought by larger as the larger grows larger until competition, a necessary element of the free market is choked by the success of capitalism.

Of course the Government gets in the way of the free market too, but usually at the request of some capitalist looking to benefit from it.

But there is a fundamental problem with advocates of a purely free market and it isn’t an economic one, it’s political. It just won’t ever happen. As Summers points out, those who argue for modest reforms will never let the radicals have a clear go at it.

For a huge impact, one must take a conglomeration of moderate proposals and bundle them together. Fortunately that has been done very well. Check it out at: http://www.fiscalcommission.gov/sites/fi scalcommission.gov/files/documents/TheMo mentofTruth12_1_2010.pdf

Capitalism in the US is disliked because capitalism worldwide is on steroids. It has been and is still actively promoted by policies, people and entities disinterested in the broader welfare of society vs the health of The Investor. The basic premise is that The Investor reigns supreme over the legislator and his standing management instructions to the state are incorporated in the Washington Consensus.

Legislators are lobbied with boatloads of dollars to maintain pliant, docile attitude to the big business. Big banks are lauded, courted and worshipped as the pinacle of big business no matter how badly they behave. Corporate taxation is a patent sin and must be rolled back at any costs. Income inequality is seen as a positive sign of the success of the individual entrepreneur in a multifarious society (until very recently in any case).

Maintain this attitude long enough and history will invetably ensure that it will produce its own backlash. Alienate enough people for a sufficiently long time and they will one day start the pendulum swinging back against all-out capitalism.

Specifically, it is only supposed to get to a point that naturally erodes as it globalizes, to encourage Occupy Wall Street movements ‘by the people, for the people’ to come up with new solutions? The meek shall inherit the earth?

The most basic principle of free market system is that it is about efficiency.

Supply and demand mechanism in a free market serves the ultimate purpose of moving resources around in the economy in order to maximize efficiency. Anyone who understands completely (and remembers) ECO100 knows this.

This means it maximizes the output and minimizes the input. There are two types of input. Human resource input and material(other) input. Sooner or later the human resource part will be taken into the picture. The free market economy will flush the human resource if not needed leading to inevitably high unemployment for the group of people that cannot adapt and has no economic function.

So now back to Larry’s question. Why isn’t capitalism working?
Well, it’s working marvelously (in most sectors where anti free market forces like monopoly, organized labor, government interventions are not there) for the goal that it is designed for: ‘efficiency’.

The goal of ‘promoter of employment and rising living standards for a broad middle class’ was for something else, capitalism (free market) never has been never will be that something.

Sorry Larry, it has never been designed for your favourite teaching of ‘infinite diversity in infinite combination’ in which human keeps multiplying like Fibonacci sequence while constrained to this ‘small’ planet.

Things have to go in order, only until we can have space ships to break out of this planet, and reach infinity creating infinite purposes for the infinite mass, then we can start employing that.

Taken into account that we are constrained here with limited resources and creating limited purposes. (Many people on the right don’t even find purpose for their lives other than domination, killing, imposing things on people different from them. The same thing for people on the left having nothing but sex, drug, alcohol, party, etc.. which all have serious long term consequences)

Stop looking for the ultimate perfect solution, look for solution for the current situation/input instead.

The thing that is not working right now in this constrained situation is not our economy, but out breeding behaviors. The problem is that when it comes to procreation, it is such a taboo that almost nobody has the courage to debate about it.

Please fact check to see that the groups that are economically ‘unfortunate’, as discussed in this article, are the most active breeding groups in every country that I have checked the data.

The unfortunates go with the unfortunates creating more unfortunates. It keeps getting worse as it goes unchecked and even promoted by government policies.

If it were the super rich that have a lot of kids and then the fortunes get divided into smaller chunks for them, we wouldn’t have that massive gap, would we?
Or similarly, if it were the fortunates that create a lot of fortunates to divide the high paying job pie that only the fortunates can handle, we wouldn’t have that gap??

In the end, if we continue promoting the creation of a larger mass with no economic purpose for them. We are cooking up an economic nightmare which ultimately will lead to an apocalyptic social unrest chaos. Welcome 2012!

Unbridled, unfettered, unregulated, laissez faire capitalism has two ultimate goals: profit and the maximization of profit. To acheive those goals, every resource: everthing and everybody is exploitable to the maximum. Exploitable to the maximum, until the exploitation reaches a level or intensity which precipitates a reaction to the exploitation. Then responsible governments generate laws and regulations defining what levels of utilization of resources are acceptable in a civilized society.

I would love to believe that the meeks inheriting the Earth would be a nice thing, but the meeks should understand reality and try to control at least themselves. Otherwise with the problem the way it is, no system, no politician, no magic can fix the impending problem.

Capitalism is simply a better economic system to provide better social mobility (ie equality of *opportunity*) and more accurate, civilized, humane selection compared to the ones that came before it. That should be the goal of any economic system, don’t force it to do something else.

Marx was wrong, he will always be. It has been proved repeatedly.

The saddest part of reality these days is that if one is to say an uncomfortable truth, he will be branded as a devil, bad, villain while the ones that say only sweet comforting words (knowing fully well that it is incomplete) will always be praised, loved, popularized and glorified.

“In the end, if we continue promoting the creation of a larger mass with no economic purpose for them. We are cooking up an economic nightmare which ultimately will lead to an apocalyptic social unrest chaos.”

The observation is absolutely accurate. The “if”s” are not. The “we” is the evangelicals and the Catholic church and Muslims. Their numbers are sufficient to control many governments and confuse or terrify or confuse many others.

As always, the intelligent, thinking citizen that creates “net national wealth” (above mere subsistence) has little say in the ongoing train wreck of current events and demographics. The throttle is not controlled by those looking ahead!

The notion that capitalism is not working is absurd..because we do not HAVE capitalism. It has been slowly corrupted over the last 15 years. Failure is part of capitalism….it is central to capitalism.

The mainstream economic thinkers (NeoClassical economists…which includes Summers) fails to realize that the credit system, the credit cycle, is not a medium within which the economy functions..it IS the primary component OF the economy.

As such, the massive an unending credit expansion has been nothing but a massive subsidy of ‘financialism’, and unproductive allocation of capital. Once productive value adding uses for credit are exhausted, credit can only go to consumption and speculation. Neither of these are sustainable.

Alan Greenspan was such a proponent of “free” markets, yet his policy of burying the system in easy credit at every hiccup was the largest protracted intervention in free markets that the world has ever seen. Hands down, the worst central banker that has ever lived. AG is the man who destroyed America.

It’s interesting to see how the transition from agricultural to industrial based economy to unemployment and the same is happening with the current transition from industrial to a knowledge or services based economy. In such a transition if new jobs or occupations are not created to replace those that have been lost by transitional processes, unemployment will increase. It’s almost like a business cycle wherein a transition is like a down period with increased unemployment. Such transitions will occur in the future as well when we start to move from a knowledge based economy to some other form as society and economies progress. We should be prepared in our minds for such inevitable events.

On a very clear standing, even within a market based capitalistic economy, there are areas which are not capitalistic and tend more toward socialistic, education being one of them. For a mass-based education, dependency on a private sector alone would be less than helpful. For such a major task, we need the volunteers to be the people who are in control. We can have the private players in there, but they alone cannot be sufficient, especially when you look at a country as large as India with a 1.21 billion population. Capitalism in the near future, at least ,is set to more of a quasi-capitalism with a mixture of socialism thrown in the intangible goods and services related sectors.

The concept of a corporation, of releasing the individuals who are making the financial decisions, from any personal financial liability…. is a criminal concept to begin with. It is too much cover and it prevents bad decisions made by a few, from having true consequences. John Corzine steals a billion dollars and gets…. questioned? Fired maybe? Like he cares. He has a billion dollars now that he stole from investors and shareholders. Who needs a day job when you have that kind of money hidden in Dubai and the Cayman Islands? Personal responsibility is the opposite of incorporation. Until corporations are outlawed as envisioned by Thomas Jefferson, the problem will only get worse.

Reading prof. Summers is like listening to a wise man whose mouth is full of marbles. He seems to be saying important things, but you don’t have the foggiest idea of what he is saying.
I’m reasonably intelligent, but after reading the article and going over some of the parts three times, couldn’t find a *single* insightful statement. Go-ahead. Read the article. Look away. Now try and write down a single interesting insight …
Sadly I wonder if prof. Summers is more interested in lining-up his next job (head of World Bank?) than educating us about what he actually means or knows.

Yes. The “Medical Industrial Complex” (is guaranteed 15% of GDP – just ask the Board of Standards and Practices), and the “Educational Industrial Complex” is like funding Conestoga Wagons rather than high speed rail–meaning the system is way too old and out of date–see Khan Academy “online” for a refreshing difference. And we’re still buying books and writing on chalk/err marker boards. And the “Welfare Industrial Complex” is full of graft, especially from the Medical Industrial Complex (LOL) but then they do have a 15% of GDP guarantee. Then as Eisenhower warned us 50+ years ago… the Military Industrial Complex. Don’t let me forget to include the Legal Industrial Complex too… well, I’d say that if the “largess” of all the “complexes” above were accounted for, we’d probably have a “surplus” rather than deficit today?? And, Buffet recently said, I heard it myself, “2000 and the 400 richest families made $50M each and 2010 they made $350M each. Hmmmm ditch the Welfare complex and we can give the 400 another $100M each and I bet then they would be even more motivated to create less jobs??? This is really all too simple–the richer have gotten a lot richer (no trickle down) as the poor a lot poorer. But don’t you dare RAISE taxes, uh oh, except on the poor. RepubTEAlicans so do remind me of the “Keystone Cops” and I guess you know how old I am, but still recall when my corporate job was sent to India in 2001.

Stop de-motivating the poor to work and instead strive for more. Why, for instance, are we subsidizing the rent that the poor pay to as low as $25.00 a month and giving food stamps and healthcare, while many of them sit home and do not work? This is not a structured society, but rather an experiment in irresponsibilty.
We also need to understand that it is an oxymoron to tell someone “get an education, work hard, be successful, then we will hate your guts because you achieved your goal and now make much more than we do. Not everyone is college material, but everyone (except the old and truly disabled) can bring something to the table.
We also need to school the 18-29 group that “you don’t start out making what mommy and daddy make and you don’t start out having everything they have worked for years to accumulate.”
Society will continue to disintegrate if we continue to permit lack of accountability.

There is so much economic ignorance in this country it is truly shocking. High School students should be required to not only take a class in business/entrepreneurship but Econ as well.

It is IMPOSSIBLE for a corporation to be “greedy” at least in the long term. You charge too much people don’t buy your products, pay your employees too little they quit and you get lousy employees and then lousy products. The only way a corporation can cheat the Invisible Hand is through government intervention.

Even breaking the law doesn’t work except in the short run, all these stupid movies that always portray pharmaceutical companies trying to sell bad drugs! Why would they ever, ever do that? It is not only unprofitable, but potentially devastating in the long run.

What does anyone care about the 1% for? Care about your own 100% instead, how much are you paid? What can you do to better your situation?

What really gets me are the right-wing idiots who say stuff like: Capitalism is working fine. USA is largely socialist. You must look to China, Singapore, and Korea for examples of capitalism.

China is no longer communist, but it’s not capitalist, it is a facist state. Singapore is brutal hellhole and police state – I lived there for a year and a half, it sucks. Korea is one giant sweatshop like China and if you get sick there – you are on your own – and probably cannot afford there healthcare and you will die.

Pure unfettered Capitalism kills! It’s what we have been practicing in the USA since 1981 when Reagan came to power. Government subsidies and handouts have declined significantly since Reagan. Reagan, Clinton(Clinton was a Southern Democrat, which is nothing more than a moderate Republican) and both Bushes gave us this freetrade nonsense, cut government handouts, refused to enforce anti-trade laws, took health insurance from affordable – not for profit- to a very expensive for profit scam.

We went from True Capitalism(which has rules) to unfettered Capitalism or Corporatism thanks to Reagnomics and Greenspans policies.

There must be government intervention, without it a nation is headed straight to hell. We the People are the government – especially when we all get involved. Corporations are naturally scared of government – because government makes them follow regulations. It never ceases to amaze me when right-wingers think that if we get government out of the way – corporations will do the right thing. That shows you how naive and shallow Conservatives truly are and why they want to be ruled over by an elite wealthy class of people.

I do believe the conservatives know that time is near and unfortunately their policies of the past 30+ years have FAILED and will put us in the next Great Depression. It’s not the governments fault it’s unfettered Capitalism!